I have two computers on a home network, one a desktop (Bobs-PC) with an external hard drive and the other a laptop (BobsLaptop). Both are running Windows 7 Professional. A MAIN feature of 7 Professional is the ability to make backups on network drives. So I was trying to do System Image backups from both computers to that external hard drive. There was no problem doing the System Image backup from the desktop to the external drive. I had two problems making the System Image backup from the laptop. First, even though the backup process creates a subfolder named "Bobs-PC" of the folder "WindowsImageBackup", according to feedback I received from Microsoft, the backup information does not "stay within" the folder "Bobs-PC". So any attempt to do a System Image backup from BobsLaptop to the same drive was doomed. Evidently, the backup process "sees" the info outside of the "Bob-PC" folder and aborts the subsequent backup (even though the SystemImage would have eventually resided in an entirely different subfolder named "BobsLaptop". So my question is this, why can't the entire System Image for Bobs-PC stay inside of the subfolder named "Bobs-PC" so that images of multiple computers CAN reside on the same drive? Is it not implied that this should be possible when Microsoft advertises the advantage of Win 7 Professional in doing network backups? Of course I was also given the solution that I could partition the external drive into two volumes to get around this limitation. So if I had ten computers on a network, I should make ten partitions of a drive? What a RIDICULOUS solution to a software problem! (In fact, since I only had two computers, I did reluctantly take that solution.) Second, Microsoft documentation says that if both the laptop and the desktop are in a HomeGroup, one should not need to establish a second user account on the desktop in order to meet authentication requirements. Instead, one just passes the credentials of the laptop user to the desktop, and that will satisfy the desktop's security requirements. But NO, there was no way to actually do that. The only way to make that image backup from the laptop to the external drive on the desktop was to create a second user account on the desktop and enter THOSE credentials in the backup program. So the documentation on this is (evidently) incorrect!

So my question is this, why can't the entire System Image for Bobs-PC stay inside of the subfolder named "Bobs-PC" so that images of multiple computers CAN reside on the same drive? Is it not implied that this should be possible when Microsoft advertises the advantage of Win 7 Professional in doing network backups? This is a program design. Image backup should be saved in folder named WindowsImageBackup. The folder Bobs-PC stores the file backups. Second, Microsoft documentation says that if both the laptop and the desktop are in a HomeGroup, one should not need to establish a second user account on the desktop in order to meet authentication requirements. Instead, one just passes the credentials of the laptop user to the desktop, and that will satisfy the desktop's security requirements. But NO, there was no way to actually do that. The only way to make that image backup from the laptop to the external drive on the desktop was to create a second user account on the desktop and enter THOSE credentials in the backup program. So the documentation on this is (evidently) incorrect! Because image backup need to run with an administrative privilege. The administrative account must be in the backup users security group. By default administrator users are in the group. However HomeGroup accesses run as a system created special user which cannot be a user that can run backup. Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.